Dropped: Reunited Worlds

I'm a little late with this, but Dropped is a new feature I've decided on, and Reunited Worlds seemed like a place to start. I was so excited for this show - it looked like Yeo Jin-gu was finally going to star in a decent-looking romance story, and the premise was intriguing. Boy comes back from the dead to see his best friend again? Count me in! But in the end, I just couldn't keep up with it.

Eighteen-year-old Sung Hae-sung has a big happy family and spends his days looking after them, and his best friend, Jung Jung-won. When he abruptly dies, Jung-won is traumatised deeply, and Hae-sung's family are scattered apart. For some reason, twelve years later, Hae-sung wakes up again, still eighteen.

I've been disappointed with a lot of opening episodes recently, because they've just jumped straight into their narrative before we know the characters or really care about their conflict - Suspicious Partner and While You Were Sleeping are some examples (I'm enjoying both of these shows immensely, but that's not the point). 

  At first it looked like we were going to slowly walk into the lives of our characters, and properly see where they are now, before Hae-sung jumped back into the picture. But his introduction was so sudden. Regardless, I liked it from the get-go - the glossy direction and wistful soundtrack gave it a fairy-tale feel, and Hae-sung was lovable from the very start. 

What Reunited Worlds did well was introduce what is most important to Hae-sung - the well being and happiness of his family, friends, and first love. But I don't think any of these plots were set up in a way that made them satisfying. It had all sorts of potential to be a touching, healing story, but the narrative kept dragging and focusing on things that had no ultimate importance. Reunited Worlds had clearly set out with the intention of having Hae-sung come back to help those who were scarred by his death. The cast seemed so perfect; they had underrated actors like Lee Shi-un, Kim Jin-woo, Kwak Dong-yeon and Kim Ga-eun all in one place, and yet not one actor was fully utilised to their potential.

  The problem was the tone of the show, I think. It was so mundane, so every-day. It was cute, and funny, but that took the bite out of the supposedly melodramatic and poignant moments. What really sucked is that when a character discovered that Hae-sung was back, their reaction was so underwhelming. Take his youngest sister: Soo-jin didn't seem surprised at all, and just gleefully accepted it. Who does that? It was frustrating, because it was like the show didn't trust its actors to handle the weight of the tragic premise. It made me wonder what was the point in becoming invested in these characters. 

  I got a little over half way through before I gave up. The show had so much going for it, and I did enjoy it when I watched it, but it was quite exhausting to get through an episode. Yeo Jin-gu was so bright that everything else paled in comparison.